More Quilts

Today it was the quilt show in Halsey. The quilts were draped across the church pews, which was neat. But I'm not sure it was worth the $3 to get in. We saw more quilts hanging in some of the shops we visited earlier this week.



I made this without a pattern, starting with the instructions for a round shawl from the Yarn Harlot's new book and then doing my own thing. It doesn't lay flat, but I'm hoping that's because I miscounted my rows. I really really really want to knit myself a pi shawl, and I've got a couple of ideas for round baby blankets that I'd like to try. One of these days. When I've got time.



And I got a couple more pieces of Birdie done. He'd probably be a quick project if I wasn't living in new mommy time. For me, everything is taking forever and ever and ever...

I don't like any of my WIPs (except maybe the pink socks), and it's extra frustrating because most of them are things I should be able to finish, or at least get back on track, in a couple hours of knitting. Wish I had a couple of hours to spend on it.

We've been on a Quilter's Safari

ten quilt shops in two days with four kids....really cute T-shirts...enough neat eye candy to make my brain numb...gorgeous fabric that I can't wait to make into a quilt...gorgeous fabric I'm not sure exactly what to do with...cheap sock yarn...lots of new ideas for future projects...

I'm exhausted. The kids must be just as tired because they've all been asleep long enough for me to cast on a new dishcloth and get a few inches done.

They Don't Sleep

My babies won't nap. They're sneaky and get their sleep in the car while we're running errands.

But I did manage a few rounds of the pineapple hat last night with all four of the kids crawling on me.

Sometimes a long nap or a good movie can work wonders. Yesterday while the littlest was napping and the big three were watching King Kong for the second time (gotta go out and buy us that one, because even though I think the villagers are the creepiest thing I've seen in a long time, the kids think it's the best thing since Jurassic Park), I plugged in the sewing machine and iron and pulled out my churn dash squares. I was hoping to get one or two of them assembled before Leif woke up.

Do you see this?!



This is all nine completed blocks AND some of the setting squares --- and the baby was still sleeping when I quit for the day because the rest of the family was ready to watch The Chronicles of Narnia. I'm hoping for another long nap this afternoon so I can get the rest of it together. Then I'll have to come up with something for the borders, which may involve a trip to Joann's.

I'm not participating in Use What You Have Month, even though it's a fantastic idea. I've got some money to spend and there are good sales going on at the same time and I just spent almost a year trying to use what I had and feeling guilty every time I did buy yarn or fabric. So this month I'm happily adding to what I have while I can. Any other month, I would've loved this.



I did cast on for the pineapple hat and manage four rounds before stopping for the night. I don't like purling three together once, let alone every fourth stitch! I've avoided stitch patterns in the past because I was intimidated by the instruction to "k1 p1 k1 into the same stitch," but that turned out to be the easy part. It's the purling that's hard. I'm going to keep plodding away and see if it gets any easier.

I was up until 2am working on projects. It would've all worked out very well except for stupid daylight savings time which meant that 2am was really 3am, and by the time you add in waking up to feed the baby, I don't even want to think about how little sleep I'm running on.

The second Julia Hat, this one in Sock it to Me! Esprit, is done. I love the color and texture, but doesn't fit my 7 1/2 pound baby, so there's no way it's going to fit the little guy I was knitting it for. And since it didn't photograph at all well, I'm not going to waste bandwidth on a blurry reddish blob.

Half of the evil awful Walmart Mainstays yarn has finally been transformed into something kind of neat. I bought 2 skeins after someone on one of the lists recommended it, thinking I'd try a baby blanket. This stuff is so scratchy and nasty even I can't convince myself to knit with it. I would've taken it back to the store, but the receipt got thrown out so I buried it in a dark corner of my stash until the hula skirt pattern in New Knits on the Block got me thinking that it could have a use after all. Instead of following the pattern, I made it up as I went along. At the time, that seemed easier than getting out the book. Start to finish, with breaks to hold the baby, it only took about two hours.

Tonight's plan is to cast on for the pineapple baby hat.

Flash Your Stash 2006

It's flash your stash time again!

My sewing room is a total mess. This is how it looked after I spent some time straightening things out. It's been too cold up there to do more than dash in and find what I'm after or shove stuff in the door. But the weather's getting nicer, so when I can take the baby up without freezing his (or my) little toes off, I'll get things put away.





Doesn't look like much, does it? There's a ton of cheap acrylic, enough sock yarn for 35 pairs of adult socks (yeah, I bought more), and a few skeins of nicer stuff that are in a sad little pile because I stole the plastic drawers they were carefully stored in so that the quilting stuff in the dining room would look like it was put away. I'll get new drawers for the yarn one of these days.

I feel like I should go knit something...

A little bit at a time, I'm managing to get things done.

I finished two more quilt squares...



Even I can't ignore the problems with the bottom left hand block, so as soon as I can get the baby to sleep without me holding him, I've got a date with my seam ripper. Once I get it all put together, it'll be just the right size to tuck into Leif's car seat.

I finished the pink baby blanket...



The pattern is Janice's Easiest Ever Lacy Blanket. I used a skein of Caron Simply Soft, cast on 91 stitches, and knit until I was almost out of yarn. It would have been done a lot sooner if someone hadn't kept yanking it off the needles.

And I'm slowly getting some embroidery done...



The quilt pattern is in Favorite Applique and Embroidery Quilts by Betty Alderman. I'd been sort of wanting to try some redwork, but hadn't found the perfect pattern yet. This is beyond perfect! I love that it's blue...I love the pictures, especially the birthday cake and the cute little house...I've done crazy quilt blocks like this before, they're easy...

I can't wait to get the embroidery done so I can start putting the blocks together!

on the trail of my chickens...

I think I might have remembered which library book the chicken quilt was in. If they aren't in Scrap Frenzy (which I won't know for sure until I pick it up at the library next week) they were in another book I had checked out at the same time. Wonder how long the babies will let me stand there and flip through quilting books before people start giving me dirty looks?

What happened to my chickens?

I've been playing around with Butterfly at the Crossroads, a pattern from The quilter's recipe book : all the ingredients you need to create over 100 fabulous quilts, working on four blocks, each in different yellow and red prints. The finished quilt should come out about the right size to tuck into the car seat.

It didn't hit me until I had almost all of the cutting done that the red fabric was my chicken fabric. I've got a vivid memory of standing there in the fabric store and picking out just the right red and black prints for my chickens. What I can't remember is what the pattern looked like, what it was called, or whether it was in a magazine or a library book. I can't even remember if my chickens were going to be appliqued or paper-pieced.

Even though I like the way these yellow and red blocks are turning out, I feel a little sad about sacrificing my chickens. There might be enough fabric left for them, but I won't know until I find the pattern...this is going to haunt me, I can tell....

Acrylic!

I went to the OB for my six week checkup today and while I was in town with only one baby, I dashed into the LYS. I swear, even with a list of planned purchases that includes things I know they carry, I can't manage to spend money in that place!

I wanted 3 skeins of Fixation. They don't carry it.

I wanted the Wonderful Wallaby pattern. They carry it, but were sold out.

I wanted a skein of Cotton Fleece. They had two left on the shelf, one in the pale yellow color I'd been imagining. But it looked dirty and even though I'm sure the dark stuff was just fluff from a neighboring skein and would come off okay, $7.25 is more than I'm willing to spend on yarn that isn't pretty and clean.

They didn't even have the pattern for the really cute little girl cardigan that was laid out next to the cash register. Which I guess is okay, because it didn't come in Alex's size.

Walmart, on the other hand, was very easy to buy yarn at. I was only going to pick up five skeins of dark green Caron Simply Soft, if they had it. I've already made two trips to the store near our place (where there is an empty wire bin and they expect to get some eventually) and was starting to think I'd have to try all three of the Salem stores before I found any. Salem store #1 didn't have a single skein, but they did have it in Barn Red, which is even better. They also had a vivid yellow that will make a great pineapple hat, and I had to get two skeins of contrasting blue for the Cozy Diamond Wrap from Modular Knits.

I wasn't paying attention to the difficulty levels while I nursed Leif in the parking lot and flipped through the library books I'd picked up on the way to the doctor. It's probably a good thing I didn't look at Wrap Style, or I might've wound up bringing home a lot more. Like the 3200 yards of worsted weight it would take to knit Cashmere Crossings. Yikes! I love it, but that's a lot of yarn, which means a lot of knitting...

I'm starting to covet cheap (but nice) acrylic. Especially Caron Wintuk, which I've liked for quite a while, and Caron Simply soft, which a friend on one of the lists was just saying wonderful things about. I read her posts without really paying attention. Then I stumbled across a baby sweater I'd knitted with it a couple of years ago and something finally clicked. I've been getting sick of Wool-Ease and here's this stuff that's softer, comes in a lot more colors (at least in the stores around here) and is even a lot cheaper. Yippee!!

I've got sock yarn. I've finally found some needles that seem willing to cooperate with my lace weight. I've got enough acrylic for the projects I want to start right now (not counting the ones I found in the library books last night.)

I'm a happy knitter.

This is neat! Too bad the only feltable green wool I think I have is tied up in a pair of Quinn's socks. I will not frog them, even if it is the perfect shade of green and the socks are too bulky to fit in his new tennis shoes and he doesn't have the slightest bit of interest in anything his mommy knits for him. Tearing apart the kids' clothing so I can cast on for a new project is probably one of those things a good mommy wouldn't do.

I wouldn't take his socks even if I could get the pdf file to open. I'm supposed to be knitting cute little booties and hats and sweaters instead of planning new projects. There are four babies I want to make things for, not including my own two. And they're all growing, so I'd better do their knitting first!

The first baby gift was going well. I'd planned a matching hat, socks, and sweater and had just the right yarn and patterns picked out. There was plenty of time to all finish it before the shower. After a day and a half of knitting, I realized that even though the hat is going to be really cute, it's not nearly girly enough.

So now I'm working on a baby blanket. It's pale pink and the feather and fan pattern I'm using is girly as can be. And I just realized that I left it in the front room with three of my kids-- gotta go!

After reading a post about a Clapotis Dishcloth on the Monthly Dishcloths KAL, I had to set aside Heath's Parade socks just long enough to cast one on. This yarn has been sitting around forever, waiting for just the right pattern.



I love projects that jump onto the needles out of nowhere and are done almost before you know it.

The socks are done too --



Do you see how perfectly those stripes match? I'm glad it happened on its own because there's no way I could have done that on purpose! The heels are some grey Kroy sock yarn that I think I bought to make a baby hat with. The color should work with all four colors of Parade I ordered, which is a relief since the big two suddenly seem to have awfully huge feet and I'm not going to buy a second skein of sock yarn just to make the legs of their socks a couple of inches longer.

It's always Knitpicks stuff....

"Is it Knitpicks stuff? It's always Knitpicks stuff...."

That's what my nine year old asked when I called her to the computer to look at something. It was Knitpicks stuff, because the Knitpicks site makes it so easy to find such neat stuff. I was flipping through their catalog a few days ago and found New Knits on the Block by Vickie Howell, then had to go see if the "view inside pages" link had a picture of the mermaid costume. Now I'm dying to get my hands on the book and see how it's done and what kind of yarn it calls for.

And, like I needed any more reasons to love Knitpicks, the same catalog shows the Lace Up Scarf/Wrap/Afghan that I fell in love with in Alterknits. I can make it for $46.06 -- as opposed to the $300+ that the recommended yarn would cost. That's if I used the Andean Silk. Now that I know it can be done with worsted weight (the pattern calls for multiple strands of stuff) I could use WOTA....or Super Saver! Is it just me, or does it seem a bit weird that the pictures in the Knitpicks catalog show the project much more clearly than the ones in the actual book?

My knitting has not being going well. Quinn got his hands on the Pretty Comfy Socks again, and...all four needles came out and...well...they're not a WIP anymore. I love the way Esprit knits up, but picking up stitches is beyond me.



I don't want to admit how many times I've cast on for the lace wristers. After a lot of counting and fussing, the first one is done except for the seam. I like the way it came out, but I'm not really looking forward to knitting its mate. I'm not sure if the best part of this little project was finally finding a good use for one of the first skeins of "yarn store yarn" I ever splurged on or figuring out how to do a knitted edging.

Frozen Lake started out well. My yarn and needles were playing nicely. I wasn't making stupid mistakes. Then I got to the part about adding full repeats and half repeats and my poor head started spinning. I don't understand what I'm supposed to do, but I want this shawl. Guess I'll have to put in a lifeline and see what I can figure out...

I used to worry about my sock yarn. I loved it, but I was scared that I'd never learn to knit on dpns, would never figure out how to turn a heel, would never figure out my gauge well enough to make a sock that fit my own foot, wouldn't be able to join my stitches into a circle without twisting them.... What if I could never figure it out? What if that yarn just sat there in my stash forever and got eaten by moths? I promised myself I wouldn't buy any more sock yarn until I could knit socks, but it was so pretty I bought more anyway. I tried to think of other things I could make with my sock yarn -- just in case socks really were too hard. And I bought more sock yarn.

I still haven't conquered the gauge problem and still worry about twisting my stitches, but I can knit toe up socks that fit. I even did one of the patterns from Socks Socks Socks the way it's written and it fits!

So I spent my Christmas money on 32 skeins of sock yarn from Knitpicks.



I don't feel the slightest twinge of fear or guilt, even though there's now enough sock yarn in my stash to make myself thirty pairs of socks. Not counting the single skeins of yarn I bought to make socks for the kids. Or the odds and ends from garage sales. I don't know when I'll have time to make all of those socks, and it doesn't matter. I've got plenty of yarn, two great new sock books, a huge stack of sock patterns I've printed off the internet. And a whole bunch of yarn that isn't sock yarn. It may not even matter if this stupid yarn diet/famine goes on for another year.

Oh, and Leif's hat fits!

Leif's First Hat

My baby needed a hat. The other babies in the NICU have their own cute little outfits and cute little stuffed animals and mine would have something cute if I could leave the stupid house to go shopping for him. So I made a hat last night and sent it up to him this morning. I hope it fits. I hope it doesn't get lost in the NICU before I can get a picture of him wearing it.

I'd love to find more baby hat patterns like Baby's First Hat. The cute premie patterns are too small, or too basic, or too girly... I've got a vision of my dream hat, but don't have the yarn to make it right now -- and may not have the skills, but as long as the hat is in the fantasy stages, that doesn't matter.

I'd like to try this pattern. I think I have the right colors in the house for an apple and leaves, and hopefully Alex has some brown in her stash that'll work for a stem. The pineapple hat is cute, too, but I know I don't have the right shade of yellow.

And what Leif really needs is a Viking hat! I followed the link expecting the chicken hat, but this is a real Viking one. I'd need to knit it even if my little guy didn't have a Viking name.

It's a Boy!

Leif was born January 17 at 7:36 am, weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces, and was 18 1/2 inches long. Is it weird that I also know his head circumfrence?

This isn't fun anymore...

I don't like my knitting anymore. I assume that's due to a combination of knitting non-stop for a month, not being able to go up the stairs to my sewing room and get the yarn I really want to play with, and small children who have sabotaged all three of my current WIPs.

Someone took one needle tip off of my Denise cables, and although I could finish Chaos without it, I'm using it as an excuse to avoid picking up stitches for the neck and button band, which doesn't seem like it can possibly work.

Someone took all of the needles out of my Opal sock, which I'd just put back on the needles for the third time in as many days. Then someone else put three of the needles and the sock back in the plastic bag and tried to convince me that it had just fallen off of the couch. I refuse to believe that something that started out in the bottom of my knitting bag could become separated from its needles without being removed from the bag first. But they did find the missing needle. So I could pick up all of those splitty little stitches....again....

Heath's sock came out the right size, and when I went to get the second ball of yarn from my knitting bag last night, there wasn't any yarn in there. It's been found and returned to me, but I had to hide the knitting bag and even if I did feel like getting up pulling it back out at the same time as I felt like casting on for the socks, I'm afraid that the needles might not be there.

I will feel like knitting again though, I'm sure of it! I just spent my Christmas money on a big order of sock yarn (lots more of the Sock Landscape I fell in love with when I was knitting the Cape Code socks) from Knitpicks. And, not five minutes later, I found out that I really really need some black and white wool to knit pirate stuff. There's a hat, which I fell head over heels for even before I saw the mittens, which are even neater. Too bad I didn't see them in time to order some yarn!

Chaos!

After a couple of false starts with other projects, I cast on for Chaos this morning. I'm in love with these random cables! Rolling the die over and over is tedious (especially re-rolling for the 5's and 6's) but the effect is worth it. And it's not like I don't have plenty of knitting time on my hands right now.

2005 - My Fo's

I actually finished 46 projects this year, some of them fairly large or complicated -- by my standards, at least. That's a lot more than last year, which puzzles me since I've spent 2005 having a new baby, buying a new house, and growing another new baby... I did knit a lot last month, but not THAT much!

Here's how it broke down --

6 pairs of adult socks
4 pairs baby socks
1 pair of socks for Heath
2 pairs of slippers for Alex
10 hats
8 scarves
4 shawls
2 baby blankets

There was also a baby sweater, a diaper soaker, and some other little stuff -- the full list of projects is in the side bar. I've decided that there's not much point comparing my own output from year to year (let alone comparing mine to anyone else's, even though that is fun!), but it's interesting to look back and see the trends I didn't notice until I saw all of the projects in one list. 2005 seems to have been my year of big flat things. Very few of the projects needed much finishing except for weaving in the ends, and I don't think I did a gauge swatch all year.

This year, I'm going to knit sweaters for me and all four kids. And tackle more complex sock patterns instead of the generic toe-up method I've been using. While I was in the hospital, I actually followed the pattern for the Gull Socks from Socks Socks Socks as written, gusset heel and all. Somehow, even though I was using yarn and needles that I happened to have with me, and forcing them to work, they fit! There are tons of patterns in that book I'd like to tackle, and I'm also waiting for the copy of Sensational Knitted Socks my mom ordered to replace a gift from her that had to be exchanged.

I'm also going to do more sewing this year. The 2006 Quilt Pattern a Day Calendar has some projects I can't wait to start in on once I'm allowed to sit up and use the sewing machine.